My fellow and favorite Aquarian, Virginia Woolf, would have turned 140 today. And given Aquarius’ water-bearing status, is it any surprise that we find water—in metaphors, in imagery, in rhythm, in flux, in just about everything—throughout Woolf’s novels? Not at Read more >
This week we’re celebrating the 160th birthday of Edith Wharton—novelist, short story writer, and the first woman to win a Pulitzer prize. But as it turns out, the 1921 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction wasn’t initially meant to go to Wharton—the Read more >
Today, on the 140th anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s birth, I have a moral obligation to speak my truth: with all due respect to my employer—whose own Joan Didion tote has been called iconic (by us)—the Virginia Woolf Barnes & Noble Read more >
No better way to break up the day than to trek over to your local bookstore! If you’re looking for a sign to get up and go for a jaunt, this is it! This week, we’ve got a treasure trove Read more >
Today in 1961, Marilyn Monroe filed for divorce from playwright Arthur Miller—a carefully chosen date, as she thought JFK’s inauguration would distract the media from the lows of her personal life. The pairing had always been surprising to Monroe’s adoring Read more >
It is “quite an exciting time to be a reader in Ireland.” So says Colm Tóibín, who has just been named the new laureate for Irish fiction. Now you, a provocateur, might ask, “Isn’t it always an exciting time to Read more >
Yesterday, the American Library Association announced the winners of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Tom Lin’s The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu was recognized in the Fiction category, while Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil in America was recognized in the Read more >
Whatever he puts his weird, imaginative mind to (a dark, nightmarish movie about fascism, a Saturday morning cartoon for kids) Guillermo del Toro makes strange and beautiful stories. And judging by the short trailer below, his Netflix adaptation of Pinocchio, out Read more >
Today marks the 72-year anniversary of the death of George Orwell, writer, journalist and scathing reviewer of Mein Kampf. Despite the distance between his lifetime and our own, it’s only this decade that we learned of a particularly surprising childhood Read more >
In a grim reminder of the ever-tenuous position of truth-telling artists (the world over), Ugandan novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija appeared in court today—via video feed from prison—to answer charges that he “mocked the peace of President Yoweri Museveni.” How does one Read more >
Tonight, the National Book Critics Circle announced the latest finalists for its annual awards in six categories: autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Finalists for the Leonard Prize for the best first book, as well as the winners of Read more >
Penguin Press announced today that it will publish Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere author Celeste Ng’s new novel, Our Missing Hearts, on October 4th, 2022. The cover design has yet to be revealed. Our Missing Hearts Read more >
Adaptation news: Deadline has reported that Garrett Basch’s new company Dive (What We Do in the Shadows, Reservation Dogs) has won the television rights to Anthony Veasna So’s bestselling story collection Afterparties. Dive plans to turn the collection into a Read more >
If you’re anything like me, then you’ve probably been anxiously awaiting the third season of Derry Girls. The wit, the chaos, the green plaid skirts—it has been the best kind of levity to (somewhat) assuage these hellish days. Recently, I Read more >
Bad news for all who believe books make us more empathetic: the young man who was sentenced to read more Jane Austen and Shakespeare after being charged with possessing a bomb-making manual, as well as hundreds of white supremacist, Neo-Nazi Read more >
The coin flips in Motherhood, the crowd-sourcing of Women in Clothes, the 2008 blog she ran about people’s Obama- and Clinton-related dreams: Sheila Heti is a master of the good conceit. Her latest: just preempting the release of her latest Read more >
